it is a very difficult thing for me, this push and pull thing that is being a father. it breaks my heart, it breaks me apart. makes me crazy.

this afternoon, i came home from work. my wife was home, and had been working with my son on a shapes exercise. let me contextualize some of our situation with our son. lately, we have been hearing from "spectators" left and right about what we "should" do about some of his problems (as if we didn't know, as if we haven't tried). much of the "advice" had to do with "being consistent", "being stern", etc. again, as if we (or i) hadn't already tried... i had just resolved a few weeks ago to be a more loving and accepting parent (something which i still am, deep inside i know my son to be a miraculous and uniquely compassionate person), but i guess the combination of the "buzzards" around me and today's particular situation and exhaustion, whatever, it caused me to snap...

so for this exercise, my son had to sort shapes. and when i asked him what a particular basic shape was, he couldn't tell me the name of it. now, this isn't some obscure shape; it's one of the basic everyday shapes that pretty much any preschooler knows. i suppose that really shocked me. it just floored me. i had to walk away in disbelief.

"they" say that all it takes is working with a child, spending time with a child, to "get up to speed." let me tell you, i spend every free moment i can with my children, trying to help them. and still, after all the incremental improvements, after all the positive encouragement, etc., there are these moments where - well, where you feel the ground simply fall away under you...

i suppose i went on kind of berserk. i worked with my son on his shapes assignment, and then on his reading response assignment, with a kind of zeal... the shock i guess had forced the chorus of "spectators" around me to suddenly have a voice, an intense and insistent voice... maybe they were right, maybe all the "appreciation" and encouragement that i had sought to cultivate was wrong, maybe all i needed was to push him harder and harder... after all, i mean, come on, he didn't know what that shape was?!?

i worked with him for a long time. he was supposed to attend soccer this afternoon (a sport with its own host of problems for him), but i told him he had to finish his homework. in a dim corner of my mind, i could feel that this whole thing amounted to some kind of torture, me holding him to task, being relentless about keeping him up to some sort of "standard" of normalcy that the crowd had put into my head... things shouldn't be this way, and by god, i will force him to be where he should be... that sort of ridiculous notion.

let's just say that by the end, he was exhausted, and i was exhausted. i had shouted so much that the nosy persnickety neighbor next door was standing in her yard listening (perhaps debating on calling on a domestic abuse incident). it was embarrassing on some level, but to be honest, a part of me didn't care. "they" (the spectators, the crowd) weren't here, they didn't have to live with the burden of this problem, "they" only always have their stinking opinions and advice. OF COURSE my child has something going on... they never listen to all the good that he is, or the possibility that the way he is has little to do with how hard he tries...

and because i was weak, i didn't listen to this either. i pushed. i pushed hard.

and now it is 3 am and i can't stop thinking about how i took the low road, and tried to force my son to change. i wander into his room and out, i watch him sleeping with buzz lightyear and his protective silly bands around his wrist, and i think about what a monster i have become, i think about how i may be damaging this precious, caring, sensitive young soul.

and i hate the world for its opinions, its "well-intentioned" advice.

i am here with my son. every day is a lesson in catch and release. it's a gentle game, and the object is and isn't to get him to be better. the game is the game. i want to be with my son in a place where i can hear him laugh in his voice, i can hear his happiness, and not the happiness i have imposed upon him for being a monkey jumping through a hoop. love is holding hands, leading, and letting go. it's always a changing, shifting dance. i am his father, and in my heart of hearts, i know this. it's just- i wish the world would stop telling me i don't know what i am doing, that i don't know my son, or what's best for him.

i know him. i know him. please let me just play with him this game.

***

we appreciate a soul when we eulogize it. i try to eulogize my son every day. because every day the boy i knew may have died, and i will be seeing something new take its place. i will record in my heart everything i know about my son, in the time that i have. i want his laughter to be burned into me, i want the joy of sharing it to have a chamber in my heart, where it can live forever. no one will be able to take it away from me. definitely not the "spectators," who think they know better.

the relationship between a father and son, it is inviolable. it is the closest thing to a sacred thing that there is...

carius. curias. i think m

today i had a good day with my son. there were things that i could have said, but didn't; instead, we just played together. after his soccer game, we drove to toys r us, and we chose out action figures to play with. it is something he likes to do, play with them, and as it was something that i used to do (so long ago), i thought it would be a good thing to do together. he chose the toy story 3 hero set of small plastic figurines (with 7 characters). after that, we went over to the beautiful park in nuuanu, and played with our action figures on the jungle gym. it was great to just play with my son, not caring about what we had to do, or what anyone would think. i think that he had a lot of fun too. afterwards, we played a bit of soccer on the upper field of the park, with him aiming to hit the mango tree with his ball. it wasn't about skills or anything, just working the ball. then, we drove to costco for his suggested lunch, which was hot dogs, and stopped off at a store in the dole plantation center that sells some anime stuff. we looked around (aiden wanted to get a japanese transformer version of buzz lightyear, but i declined to buy it), and then drove home.

in the afternoon/evening, aiden, willow and i drove over to honbushin for the daikon festival. the kids always have fun at it. strange, but it's been almost every year that we've gone. it is kind of a watermark for us... was it a couple of years ago? i tried to do a sword form on stage. this year, it's all about the senior groups providing the entertainment, which is very different from a lot of other festivals. the daikon festival has been steadily growing in popularity, and on this evening, there weren't very many places to sit. the kids made a pinwheel, played a couple of games (tissue paper nets trying to catch rubber balls, tissue paper fishing lines trying to pull up balloons), made some sort of monkey-climbs-the-rope toy, and drew pictures for the mikoshi... and then, it was off to home...

i sat on the sofa upstairs, and tried to practice on the guitar, with a few finger strengthening exercises and barre chords. and not long after lynn came home, i kind of passed out.

aiden mentioned to willow (close to the end) that he'd had a great day. and for that, i was happy...

burnt

today my soul is burnt
from touching the world too much
today, from feeling
a frayed rope slipping
and stabbing,
red handed,
i felt me pulled
from my stand.

dry voice cracks and bleeds
unable to let loose of a silken
ribbon of pain.
it comes out in croaks
and starts,
an ugliness
that, once revealed,
wants a hide.

painted corners

to speak
is to paint yourself into the corner
of a round room.

the colors don't match
my chameleon skin
i prefer to remain
anonymous and invisible
and afloat in a world of signifiers

but still i play the game
we all play the game

so
know me
but don't know me
don't get a handle on me
but hold me close
please
close as the next newest and best thing
in the world

at least till tomorrow
when i update
and fashion changes
these emperor's clothes

ghosts in the walls

they say this place is h a u n t e d
they say things occupy the shadows in the corners of eyes
and in the walls things pass like
xray stares through air and people.

there are holes they say
within and between everything solid
more holes than you could count
even in a beatles song
more holes than you could fill up
with words and reassurances.

they are talking even now
in whispers half heard
a second too late after our own voices
reverberate on the hollow tile.

can you hear them?

they are passing through us now
the ghosts in the walls
flitting through us like
wind through raindrops
allowing us our selfish dreams
before we crash and mix
in the holes we all
come back to.

blah

a voice that is husky from all of the screams in the bathwater.
a husk born emptied of fluid of core of sperm of soul.
a soil less fragrant for the colorless and infertile dreams dyed in it.

is it grown up or groan up?
given up giving up to the downcast lid sky?

(no you haven't)

i am here
waiting
a pretend dead man in a pretend dead world.
longing for the real dead die done.

if a part of me lives still,
like a worm peeking hesitantly out and up

kill it please.

to those few (hello?) who tuned in regularly, my apologies. life has been busy, what with the new job. i have been a cog in this daily grind to produce viable relevant instruction for my expanded family of kids...

tonight, today, i exploded at my own two children. i arrived at my kids' piano teacher's house (my father had dropped them off). my son had just finished his lesson; he'd had a good session, largely because i sat down with him for a couple of hours the day before struggling through his pieces. but when i asked to see his homework, i was unpleasantly surprised to discover that he hadn't done a major assignment, and i hadn't even been aware of it, because he had forgotten to bring home one of his homework folders detailing the assignment since monday. i was also disappointed by the note from the teacher asking us to have a talk with him about his focus in class. now, the issue with my son's attention is nothing new; we have been struggling with it over the past year, and recently, have been seeking professional assistance in coming up with a name for it, a diagnosis to give this amorphous problem a border and a handle. but it still was upsetting for me to hear that it was cropping up in a new classroom...

and then, when my daughter came out of her lesson, i learned that she hadn't done a thing all week: no theory, no significant work on her pieces. that was the straw that broke the camel's back. i had been devoting a large amount of my attention to my son's piano playing, and had taken for granted that my daughter could handle things on her own, and i came to discover that she hadn't been practicing all week...

...so, i blew up. i don't know how else to describe it. came up with irrational punishments in the car ride home, including selling their precious ds's. this totally broke their hearts, and they were crying all the way home, moaning "no, daddy, no."

like the fifth little pig...

and i, their merciless butcher.

***

it is now almost midnight.

i had a long talk with my son, after he cried at the discovery that his ds was gone. no, i hadn't sold it, and i don't intend to, but i did take it away from him. i actually shouted (bastard that i am) about how he wasn't supposed to play it on a weekday anyway, so why was he missing it? of course that wasn't a placation of any sort. my son couldn't stop crying, his voice sounding like the fractures of some huge glacial wall... and i, i was this inevitable manmade environmental global disaster, called bad fathering.

eventually, i took the discussion to his bedroom, and, somewhat realizing the error of my ways, tried to talk in gentler tones. i learned from my son that his counselor had been talking to him about something called an ILAC (no doubt an acronym of some sort) which was like his heart, and how every time he was hurt, a piece of it broke off. mortified, somewhat knowing the answer, i asked him if i had ever caused pieces of his ILAC to break off. he answered yes...

i felt so terrible after that. i apologized profusely, tried to explain (inadequately) how much i loved my son, tried to explain how sometimes a father has to push his children in order to get them to stand on their own, and sometimes (out of inexperience or perhaps a lack of control) he pushes too hard. i tried so hard to explain myself, but i wasn't sure who i was trying to convince, or what i was trying to say... in the end, i was just left with this gnawing guilt. i am still chewing over it now.

i promised (inadequately) that i would try not to yell, that i would do my best to build up my son's ILAC in every moment that i had with him. at this point, he confided in me that one of the things that caused his ILAC to grow were his "jajas," his teddy bears, that he always held close to his heart when he was sleeping...

***

my son, i realized, has inherited the best characteristics of both my wife and i, and this is what is destroying him, leaving him vulnerable to the viciousness of this world.

when i was young, i kind of had this sense of empathy for all toys. i felt that they, like all children, like myself, were vulnerable. they were intended to be happy things, they were imagined to be happy things, but ultimately, they were subject to the whims of a world with a short attention span and a cruel and fickle heart. in response to this secret understanding of the nature of the world, i took it upon myself to love some of the toys under my care with a heart that was undying in its loyalty. i held onto "owlie" (my one eyed, sleepy, water-bell owl) and "donald" (donald duck with a mean and vicious sewn up scarred neck) to show a love for them that i knew did not exist in the world for those who deserved it, for myself... we may have slipped through the cracks, but in the sewers, i would hold onto these rejects (a reject myself), and rebuild a society, alligators in the sewers (ala radiohead's fog)...

my son has this same inherent empathy for toys, toys on the brink of being broken and forgotten. he, like me, has this understanding of the fragility of childhood and innocence, how the world paints a face upon it as though it is the happiest thing and time in the world, when in fact, in reality, childhood is a toy that is vulnerable to the whims of an attention deficient and largely uncaring world of "grown ups." it is the grown ups that are the children, fickle and immature. i had always known that, and i know this still, perhaps acutely so, now that i have become the enemy. but my son knows this truth just as well as i, and he lives it every day.

it's no coincidence that my son's favorite movie is "toy story 3", and his new favorite hero is woody. it's because the movie aligns with his basic philosophy about toys/children on the verge of being forgotten, toys/children who the world takes for granted as being happy and mindless, but who live out a day-to-day struggle to hold the attentions of the "children."

my son is a very caring child. he spots the outsiders, the least among all, and actively shepherds and cares for them. his heart is big, and populated with all of the forgotten denizens of the universe...

***

why is this world so narrow and cruel? there is a one-way path with a rushing current of an escalator floor, and we must shove everyone on it to move to- where? i try to stand aback and question it all, but the ground beneath my very feet is moving, the whole world is shifting and jerking with the speed of our momentum, and if i am to give my children a place in this world, then i, like everyone else, must push and shove...

there is no room in this world for gentleness, for peace, for idle chatter.

or so it seems.

***

i told my son that his heart, his ILAC, is the most precious thing in the world. i told my son that i would learn to be careful about it, that i would try my best to find ways to allow it to grow big and strong. it is a difficult promise, but it is one that i must strive to fulfill.

i hope someday that he can grow to have the heart that i should have had, had i NOT grown up...